27 Doors The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation La Rosa, Giacomo. 2016. 27 Doors. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33797289 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Behind 27 Doors Hides a World Inspired by Swift and the Grimm Brothers An Introductory Essay and an Original Feature-Length Novella, 27 Doors Giacomo La Rosa A Thesis in the Field of Literature and Creative Writing for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University May, 2016 © 2016 Giacomo La Rosa Abstract This novella is a fantasy thriller that wants to deal with death and its various shapes throughout a surreal journey, where a superior power challenges the protagonist to face his own guilt, or original sin. Characters and storylines travel through time to recurring locations, connecting like in a puzzle, where only at the very end they will find the final resolution. Touching afterlife themes, the story remains as earthly as it can be, letting morality dance with the uncertain context. Religious elements are present, representing the ongoing battle of evil vs. good, all within the personal decisions of a young man forced to enter each one of twenty-seven doors. But at the end, each door will be forced to comply with his innocent soul. The story doesn’t follow a straight pattern at first. The rules of the world change constantly, yet the plot is ignited from the first word. iv Dedication To Yasmin, for inspiring my return to school. Thank you. iv v Acknowledgement I would first like to thank my thesis director Professor Leo Damrosch of the Extension School/English Literature Faculty at Harvard University. Prof. Damrosch’s words of encouragement and thoughtful insights allowed me to find the bravery to finish this work. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Talaya Delaney Research Advisor in the Humanities Lecturer in Extension of the Extension School at Harvard University as the advisor of this thesis, and I am gratefully indebted to her for her very valuable comments. Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents for providing me with unfailing support throughout my years of study and through the process of writing this thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. Thank you. Author Giacomo La Rosa v Table of Contents Dedication ………………………………………………………………………….…..iv Acknowledgement. …………………………………………………………………..…v I. Behind 27 Doors Hides a World Inspired by Swift and the Grimm Brothers ......1 Settings ………………………………………………………........…2 Structure ……………………………………………………..............3 Motif……………………….…………………………….…..……….5 Characters…………………………………………..…………….......6 Genre & Conclusion…………...…………………..………………....9 Summary of 27 Doors ……………………….....………………...…18 Bibliography…………………………...………..…………………...23 II. Original Feature-Length Novella 27 Doors …………………………………….24 Behind 27 Doors Hides a World Inspired by Swift and the Grimm Brothers. Writing a novel carries a responsibility toward the readers. It is also a form of respect towards other authors, who have already dealt with specific genres, mastering them to the most subliminal level, and in so doing, defining literature. I am not sure that I paid the necessary respect to those who successfully wrote before me; but certainly, I inherited their curiosity to explore unknown areas of my mind, searching for places of mysterious and inexplicable nature, and making those places the sets of my plot and subplots. For 27 Doors --the novella that I am writing- and Jerry --the protagonist-- Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and the original tales of the Brothers Grimm mostly influenced me for their ability to jump from one world to another (Swift), and from one context to another (Grimm). My novella reflects the ambience and the settings so beautifully written by Grimm, implying an inner darkness and violence that is not always explained, but that is there, and its presence is enough to create a sense of discomfort. There are four main elements, which link my writing to my inspiring sources: 1) Settings; 2) Structure 3) Motif; and 4) Characters. Settings What I mean by settings is the universe where my characters interact and move. The settings I chose vary in space and time. In the fantasy-world settings are added as extra layers. They become almost actual characters, hiding the secret force that governs the entire story. Reading from Brothers Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel I found my first inspiration on how to create such universe. Grimm’s forest is more than just a natural habitat, and the two characters are haunted by fear, just like Jerry is haunted every time he walks through a door. In Hansel and Gretel, “They walked the whole night and all the next day too from morning till evening, but they did not get out of the forest, and were very hungry, for they had nothing to eat but two or three berries, which grew on the ground.” The dark and oppressive world described here mirrors Jerry’s world. Neither Hansel and Gretel nor Jerry are allowed to live their adventures like other human beings. They must confront a superior power. While I reprise Grimm’s fairy tales supernatural world, I also try to make the context of my chapters primarily realistic, and this choice can be compared more to Swift. Indeed, once we accept that Lilliputians are smaller than Gulliver, there is nothing unnatural about the characters and the sites that Swift describes (This is a point I learned from Dr. Damrosch in his class The Rise of the Novel, and that I found very relevant in terms of thinking through my own work.) I try to imitate this concept by having Jerry interact with other characters, just like people do in every day life. However, if Swift makes the passages from one world to another very straightforward, I chose to make the 2 transitions between chapters more fantastic, going back to the Brothers Grimm’ supernatural. Structure The structure of my novella is inspired by Gulliver’s Travels, which – in each of its four parts -- introduces different lands without the reader knowing what is coming next. The concept of moving forward, and towards different, apparently disconnected, situations was a valuable inspiration to me. My novella models this movement, and using the structure of linked chapters, allows me to keep the story shifting in the direction it needs to, without necessarily leaving the reader behind –or at least I hope so. Gulliver’s Travels is disorienting, but not confusing, thus the entering in each one of my doors is also disorienting at times, but never confusing. On this matter Jenny Mezciems’s words on the impact of Swift’s disorienting worlds in Gulliver’s Travels provide a good sense of what I experienced: We as readers thus have no context outside the fiction by which to judge statements about things we cannot recognize and have not experienced. We are left with only the language of fiction; our recognition of the relationship between ideas, form, and expression must all be exercised within the one frame of reference. The extreme difficulties we encounter are engineered deliberately by Swift and may be taken as expressing his insight and indeed foresight, highlighting the power of fiction to persuade and the abuses of 3 that power. He looks backward towards the romance and forward towards the novel. Gulliver’s experiences in books I, II, and III are of fictional worlds that move towards the full utopia of book IV. (861) In 27 Doors Jerry is disoriented physically and emotionally because he must learn how to experience life, and the reader experiences the same journey door after door. Jerry never loses his self-confidence, and he grows into a stronger man, and the reader never loses track of the storyline, although it apparently keeps on changing every time. I also structured my chapters with an eye to Grimm’s tales – in which each chapter/tale is almost a story complete in and of itself. From the Grimm’s books, I drew on the idea of each chapter being a different kind “tale”–represented, in my novella, by the twenty-seven doors. The chapters, modeled after Grimm’s tales, are connected and experienced by the same central protagonist, Jerry. As in Grimm’s work, each door reveals a place that is unique and mysterious, but also part of a larger fabric that can only be understood by studying the whole. I wanted to keep a sense of the unexpected real and relevant throughout the story. My aim was not to achieve a cliffhanger effect, but rather to create a universe where anything could happen at any given time, without following the rules of our every day life. 4 Motif There are four main motifs which run through my work, and which were inspired by Swift and Grimm: the object of the mirror; the theme of magic; the idea of mystery as a governing plot force; and the concept of violence and how violence shapes character. The object of the mirror. One of the most famous lines written by the Grimm brothers is from Snow White, “Mirror, mirror, here I stand. Who is the fairest in the land? (185)” The journey is still long ahead of me, and my final goal is not to make my book the “fairest in the land,” but at least to be admitted in the land. The image of mirror, quite concretely, inspired the idea of doors in my novella.